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Nasscom 2001 rehashes old soundbytes on new economy

NetScribes/Abhijit Basu & Amitava Sanyal

Nasscom president Dewang Mehta's effect seems to have rubbed off on IT minister Pramod Mahajan too - as far as wisecracks go.

Day One of Nasscom 2001 saw Mahajan at his wittiest. "Only ministers should make keynote addresses, as they have the key and the notes," Mahajan quipped. For the rest of his address, he dwelt mostly on 'IT for the masses' - the catch-phrase of the season.

He handed over the dais to Sumantra Ghoshal, the Robert P Bauman professor of strategic leadership at the London Business School and dean of the Indian School of Business, who held forth for an hour on the value of human capital in front of a rapt audience.

"Entrepreneurship within a large organization should be encouraged and that is what will lead to greater returns in the long run," he said in his presentation titled 'Competing on human capital'.

"The new economy is not just about the Internet. It is about a much more fundamental transformation of business and society," he said.

"New companies need to stop looking at their people as a factor of production, and thus minimise costs. They are a part of the company and they should be seen as volunteer investors, and it is the CEO who should ensure that."

After Ghoshal, the show could at best muster a less-than-enthusiastic response from the crowd. Nasscom's Mehta, however, boasted of over 5,000 registrations for the conference on Day One.

Although the speakers' list comprised the industry who's who, the same old jargon spewed forth from the podium.

KB Chandrashekhar, chairman and CEO of JamCracker, proudly proclaimed that he still retained his Indian passport, but later, at a tête-à-tête with the press, failed to explain why his companies, started in India inevitably migrate westward.

Chandrashekhar - who chaired Sebi's venture capital panel - blamed it on the red tapism and infrastructural lacunae.

His spiel on evolving e-strategies failed to get the standing ovation that Ghoshal was greeted with at the end of his session.

Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh used the occasion to announce an IT task force for the state. And not surprisingly, Mehta figured on the task force.

As 'breast pieces of farm raised chicken' at lunch set the conference schedule back, ICICI CEO and MD KV Kamath found that he had only about 12 minute slotted for him by session chairman Phiroz Vandrevala, and raced through his slide presentation on the e-volution of ICICI.

Not surprisingly, he proposed that 'speed' be counted as a capital in e-economy.

Admittedly, NIIT's Rajendra Pawar threw up more questions about the 'E-volving Strategies for the Digital economy' than he had answers for, whereas TCS CEO S Ramadorai highlighted his company's efforts at bridging the digital divide.

The crowd's lukewarm response to the soundbytes was evident when Vandrevala had to jocularly threaten that tea wouldn't be served even if the crowd forced an early end to the session by not asking questions.

At the Q&A that followed, a visibly agitated member of the crowd questioned the guilt trip that possibly forced biz honchos to talk about rural India compulsively.

Pawar put the compulsion at simple business economics and even told the crowd that he had an uncle living in a village.

There are lots more packed into the next two days' schedule. Speakers on Day Two include London Stock Exchange's Caroline Goodman, NYSE's Roger Burkhardt and Nasdaq's Alfred R Berkley.

So, will they pitch against each other at a Nasscom forum yet again? Though Mehta insists that they have different agendas, past experiences point elsewhere. Watch this space for more.

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